James Surowiecki writing in the New Yorker: In the past, the F.A.A. was remarkably hesitant to take planes out of service. The problems with the DC-10 were well known to regulators for years before a 1979 crash forced them to ground the plane. But, again, those standards no longer apply. In the nineteen-seventies, after all, [...]
Clay Christensen
Harvard Business School professor Clay Christensen’s theory of disruptive innovation is a model we should all understand. Christensen’s book on the subject, The Innovator’s Dilemma, is the only business book that “deeply influenced” Steve Jobs. In this Nieman Report article, Christensen, in collaboration Nieman Fellow David Skok, applies his theory to the news industry and [...]
Clay Christensen is best known as the author of The Innovator’s Dilemma. He’s also the author of a new book, How Will You Measure Your Life?, which has some wonderful insights (see excerpts here and here). The founder of 37Signals, Jason Fried, recently spent some time with Christensen and gained a key insight into why [...]
If you study the root causes of business disasters and management missteps, you’ll often find a predisposition toward endeavors that offer immediate gratification. Many companies’ decision-making systems are designed to steer investments to initiatives that offer the most tangible returns, so companies often favor these and short-change investments in initiatives that are crucial to their [...]
I mentioned Clayton Christensen’s new book How Will You Measure Your Life? onto my summer reading list. Here is an excerpt: The Trap of Marginal Thinking In the late 1990s, Blockbuster dominated the movie rental industry in the United States. It had stores all over the country, a significant size advantage, and what appeared to [...]
It’s possible to love your job and hate it at the same time: On one side of the equation, there are the elements of work that, if not done right, will cause us to be dissatisfied. These are the hygiene factors: status, compensation, job security, work conditions, company policies, and supervisory practices. It matters, for [...]
